That is rather misleading. Kind of like telling the Germans what a mess Berlin was in 1945 after we tore it up. Of course we had a reason to tear it up, but that’s not the point. Anyway, Obama took office in late January of 2009, at which time, the unemployment rate was 8.2% (US Dept of Labor Statistics, February, 2009). While it has risen almost 1 percent since that time to 9.1 % (US Dept of Labor Statistics, Sept, 2011), it pales in comparison to the meteoric rise during the Bush administration (4.1 full percentage points between January, 2001 and the day Bush left office. A rise of 1 percent in the past 3 years represents a significant slowing of the momentum in the growth of unemployment as opposed to the Bush years. In March of 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.4%. In less than two years, it nearly doubled under the Bush Administration to the 8.2 percent mark left for the oncoming administration to deal with. That’s a 3.6 percentage point gain in unemployment under Bush in two years, as opposed to less than 1 percentage point under Obama as of September. That means that the rate of growth in unemployment has slowed by an amazing seventy-five percent under the Obama administration, in spite of how difficult it is to turn such a trend around.
Your friend
Sufjon
Apparently there are differences in reported statistics. There are also differences in opinion about why the unemployment rate continued to climb after Obama’s election, going up a full point between the election and the day he took office, and all the while Bush was practically his lap dog. Please do not assume that I, or anyone else who opposes Obama, automatically approves of everything Bush did.
Some would say the fast increase after the election was due to the expectation of what Obama had in store for the country, and further explains why the unemployment and investment rates simply don’t improve despite there being a tremendous amount of money sitting on the sidelines.
Obama might be a growing disappointment to some of his more left-leaning followers, but he is in no way a disappointment to small business people, who fully expected him to be their enemy and have not been disappointed in that expectation. Trouble is, those are the people who create most jobs, and upon whom recovery is always dependent.
I know lots and lots of them. I know lots of community bankers too; people who want to loan money to small businesses to hire people, invest and expand. But the story is always the same. “Too risky. I’m standing pat.” Talk to a community banker. He or she will tell you that nearly all the business lending they are doing is on rate-induced refinances and very short-term borrowing. The same is true of farmers and ranchers. They’ll borrow to get a crop in, or to prepare livestock for market, then pay off. Why buy more farm land or ranch land or even borrow money to improve what you have (an endless process) when Obama thinks you’re 'rich" if you make $200,000 in one year (maybe lose money next year) and wants to tax you more. That’s the money you have to pay your land mortgage with. (yes, interest is deductible, principal is not). And you see the federal government grow and grow and look at the salaries in government and you know, as sure as you know your own name, that you’re the one who is going to have to pay for it.
And why not stand pat? Sure, interest rates are incredibly low right now for business loans. But business loans are always fairly short term. When will that 3.5% rate become 13.5% or 23.5% due to the overspending? It will spike, and everybody knows it. You won’t borrow in an environment like this. You’ll try to pay down your existing debt as fast as you can before the interest rate spike you know is coming, and that’s exactly what most are doing. If your business is highly energy-dependent and Obama openly promises to make energy costs go up and does everything in his power to do so, with or without congress, are you really going to invest in processes that require energy? Transportation? No, you’ll stand pat with what you have, and hope you can afford the higher energy and transportation costs that are coming at you like a bullet. Are you going to hire people, knowing full well that your health insurance costs are going up because of mandates and will go up even more? When Obama wants to allow people to sue you as an employer if you prefer one prospective employee over another and the one you prefer is the one who has worked continuously while the other hasn’t, are you really going to feel that it’s a good idea to even start the process? And some business people even know that high deficits discourage exports, which they do, and Obama has yet one more big deficit spending bill for the benefit, largely, of unions, just like the “stimulus bill”. And while Obama has been laying low with “card check” for now, who really wants to take on new people who could be coerced in their homes by union organizers to unionize your business without your being able to even be part of the conversation? You wouldn’t. You would stick with the loyal people you have, and hope for the best.
And worst of all, small business people of all sorts expect it to get significantly worse if obama is re-elected in 2012. I don’t know a single one who doesn’t. He won’t be facing re-election then, and won’t have to pretend anything anymore.
The only amusing part about all of it is that a lot of business people have learned the word “kulak” who didn’t know it before. Lots more know what it means now, and they know it means them.
